DVDebut: Christophe Barratier's powerhouse, French-financial-crisis film, THE OUTSIDER

Having seen and enjoyed Christophe Barratier's three previous films -- The Chorus, Paris 36 and yet another War of the Buttons remake -- TrustMovies was anxious to see what this nostalgia-dipped filmmaker has been up to of late. Interestingly, his current film, THE OUTSIDER, is also his least nostalgic (unless you count the financial crisis of the decade past as a piece of nostalgia) and may very well be his best movie yet.

As co-adapted (with Laurent Turner) and directed by Barratier (shown below), from the memoir by Jérôme Kerviel -- the trader involved and responsible (with the help, of course, of his bosses) for what happend at one of France's larges and most "reputable" banks -- the movie is both crackerjack entertainment and yet another indictment of the world's financial establishment.

What Barratier, his cast and crew capture particularly well is the atmosphere of the trading room -- this is as good as I've seen; better, in fact, that the overblown and so-pleased-with-itself version Scorsese gave us in The Wolf of Wall Street and certainly on a par with The Big Short. Because the movie is based on Kerviel's story, as told by him, we of course get a biased viewpoint, and yet the filmmaker and his star, the excellent and increasingly versatile Arthur Dupont, (of One to Another, Bus Palladium and Haute Cuisine) show us both the relatively innocent young man who begins the tale and the hotshot, semi-sleazebag he eventually becomes.

Dupont's fine performance (the actor is shown above and below, left) also allows us to view the incremental changes in Kerviel as he moves along his path. This fellow was less a crook than a very good trader, as well as a smart, intuitive man.

The supporting cast is made up of some excellent actors, too, especially François-Xavier Demaison (above, right) who plays Kerviel's initial boss -- a fellow who is smart, nasty, smarmy, and just full of Jesus allusions. This is a terrific, award-calibre performance.

Romance is provided by the attractive and feisty Sabrina Ouazani (above, left), as the young IT woman Kerviel falls for, while Thomas Coumans (above, right) portrays Mathieu, his best friend at the bank, a man who tries to keep our would-be hero on the straight-and-narrow.

We get a taste of Kerviel's family life, too, as well as some of his extra-curricular activities (below) but mostly we see him turn from a quick-study innocent into a force of nature so far as trading is concerned. And when the shit finally hits the fan, we see in action the much-vaunted "team spirit" (that doubles as the movie's aka title), as team mates, and especially the bank's bosses, run for cover.

The Outsider is yet another necessary lesson in why the world's financial sector so desperately needs those very regulations that seem to be currently disappearing -- perhaps for good.

From Distrib Films US, reaching DVD via Icarus Film Home Video, the movie hit the street this past Tuesday, June 5 -- for purchase and/or rental.

FLOORED visits the floor of the Chicago Stock Exchange & those who inhabit(ed) it

What with all the sleaze going on of late (yeah, and of early, too), it's nice to get away from Wall Street for a bit, even if the alternative is a visit to the trading floors of the second city.  The new documentary FLOORED, from filmmaker James Allen Smith attempts to penetrate the trading floors and their customs via a little information (not nearly as much as TrustMovies might have wanted, however) and with interviews with a number of the men who are -- or were -- involved in the scene.

Lightning-fast reactions and guts of steel are but two of the qualfications supposedly needed to work on the floor, and yet, as Smith (who is pictured at left) shows us during the course of his 77-minute-but-still-too-long movie, computerized trading has pretty much decimated those floors and the people (almost all male) who worked them.  The most interesting and telling portion of the film, in fact, is an argument between two old friends, one of whom has embraced this computerized mode, while the other refuses to even consider the possibility.

Says one of these interviewees: "The market is a whore who has to fuck as many as possible, as quickly as possible."  Well, OK.  But is this "fuck" a good thing or a bad?  We never really learn the ans-
wer, probably because most of the men have divided loyalties, to put it mildly.  They see the craziness, the nonsense, and also the wealth to be gained.  Given the opportunity, they'd unzip and go at it all over again, and as fast and furiously as possible.

Some of these guys, pictured above and below, are pretty well-
spoken.  They make their points.  One animal hunting trader does seem a little scummy.  With most of them, in fact, you'll eventually feel that a good therapist is definitely needed. (And sure enough, we soon see one at work!)  One fellow seems happy to be inter-
viewed three sheets to the wind, which grows embarrassing fast.

Never boring, exactly, Floored struggles onwards with something interesting or incisive being said now and again but not often enough.  The filmmaker had the opportunity to actually explain to his audience how the stock exchange works.  So rather than just showing us traders doing their bizarre numbers, why didn't he spend a few minutes showing us how they make their trades -- what certain hand signals (or however they communicate) mean, and how shares and the like actually move from one place to another, symbolically, metaphorically, however.

He doesn't do this, and we leave the movie pretty much as ignorant as we came in -- except for meeting a few marginally weird and interesting fellows over a period of a couple of years.  This time lapse allows us to see the guys in the heat of battle and later when the war seems pretty much over. How they handle unemployment, and/or the shift from floor trading to computer trades provides the meat of the movie, such as it is.

Floored opens today, Friday, May 7, in New York City at the Quad Cinema.  Further and past play-dates can be found here, along with the various other ways you can see the movie: in pieces via Babelgum (online and through mobile devices) and with VOD and DVD.  Your move.